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Barely three centuries ago, the the majority of the worlds productive land belonged either communally to traditional societies, or to the higher power of the monarchy or the church.  Yet that pattern, and the way of life that accompanied it, had largely disappeared by the start of the nineteenth century.

In “Owning the Earth”, Andrew Linklater undertakes an examination of how the revolutionary idea, “that one person could own part of the Earth exclusively” (Page 11), developed, and the drastic reverberations felt by society at large.

Before the development of the idea of private property, English social structure had been organized around the notions of “mutual obligation” and feudalism since the early Middle Ages. In practice this dynamic meant that the country was not governed by the monarch, but by individual lords who “leased” land from the king and oversaw their own manors or estates. In exchange for the land, these lords would provide military and other services to the King when he requested. Under the same reasoning, in exchange for housing, land and protection, serfs had to perform tasks to maintain and cultivate the estate, as well as to pay several different kinds of taxes. The serf was neither a slave nor property, but was considered to be a fixture of the land. As such, a serf’s children were also tied to the land.

A similar sentiment in present in St. Augustine, Excerpt from Tractate 6 (John 1:32-33), in that, “God has distributed to mankind these very human rights [of having property] through the emperors and kings of this world”. It is up to their discretion to determine how land is divided, and which territories lords are given.

Linklater makes clear that the idea that these rights (to raise cattle and crops, construct buildings, rent land) could be owned individually promoted a, “sense of greed and selfishness in stark opposition to the previous belief that people help about property” (13).

Several events lead to this transformation. The first was the exponential growth of the wool market due Europe’s rapidly rising population. Driven by the prospect of wool profits, landowners competed to take exclusive control of the ground, and proceeded to move as many families as possible out, “whole villages and townships were soon emptied” (Page 17). The manipulation and displacement of tenants was so widespread that the church of England even found it necessary to implement a special prayer, “we heartily pray [O Lord] to send thy Holy Spirit into the heart of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and dwellings…may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands…[nor create] unreasonable fines” (Page 17).

Another major development was the seizure and subsequent redistribution of the Church’s land by King Henry VIII. Over the course of four centuries, England’s monasteries had acquired over 2 million acres of farmland, more than 20% of all the cultivated land in England at the time. Moreover, the Church’s land included some of the most fertile and valuable in the kingdom. Yet by 1540 Henry VIII had confiscated much of this estate, and subsequently sold it off over the course of seven years to pay for his seemingly unquenchable thirst for war. Aristocrats with influence were at the top of the queue to purchase this monastic land, but when the wool market collapse for the first time in a century, they were forced put it up for sale once again. This time, London merchants, careful farmers, government officials, and even tenants on fixed rents, purchased the land. Essentially, anyone who had the cash was a viable and considered buyer. This large scale redistribution of land laid waste to traditional communal civilizations, displaced entire peoples from their homelands, and for the first time made it possible fro a commoner to hold considerable territory.

Lastly, I found most fascinating the new ideas of property ownership that arose from some of the settlers in the New World. Prior to the arrival of the Puritans, possession of the Earth in both America and the Caribbean was deemed to be derived from the royal charter backed by “divine grace”, given to a particular people or company. John Winthrop however put foreword the idea that ownership of the Earth did not depend on the law, but was created by human toil. Even more, since the Native Americans did not, “inclose no land neither have any settled habitation, nor any cattle to improve the land” (Page 28). This line of reasoning was in complete opposition to the beliefs the Lenape had concerning their relationship to the Earth. While the Lenape saw themselves as part of nature (no more important than trees, animals, or the rivers), the Puritan settlers perceived nature as something to be conquered and possessed if certain criteria were met.

 

Andro Linklater’s opinions on private property are not subtle. With descriptions like “contagion” and “monster”, he is clearly not a fan of the principle that helped form a new psychological outlook and sensibility that prioritized the individual. Linklater lists the results of the private property revolution: “The traditional rights of villeins and laborers were overturned. The claims of the feudal superior, whether lord or king, were frozen out. The needs of wives and children were subsumed. All those who might have challenged the solitary male owner’s right to exclusive possession of the land were sidelined” (Linklater 36). Unsurprisingly, each of these results was presented as deeply tangled with religious values and histories. A few points in Linklater’s work regarding the conversation between private property and religion are worth noting.

First, the process of putting church land on the market circa 1540  is crucial. Since the Protestant Reformation spread rumors of the “luxury and decadence of monastic life,” monasteries attracted a degree of scrutiny that would result in King Henry VIII’s seizure of religious property (Linklater 20). The seized land would be sold to pay for the King’s navy and foreign wars, leading to several turnovers of the land that was priorly incredibly lucrative for wool production. The seizures of lands formerly held by monasteries accelerated the psychological development of individualized sensibilities. The seizures also set in motion the horrible conditions of what Marx would call “primitive accumulation” in which “so many peasants were driven off the manors that once supported them, they were deemed a menace to England’s emerging property-owning society” (Linklater 21). It seemed that in effort to rebuke the corruption of the Catholic church, an even greater corruption would take its place. Yet whereas the corruption of the Catholic church was blamed on a community, eventual criticism of private-property owning societies would be placed on a system. Curiously, in both scenarios the individual is protected.

Next worth mentioning is this unmistakable linkage between private property and Protestantism, tied tighter by a democratic knot. Referring to the development of private property for commercial usage other than subsistence farming, Max Weber argued that, “profit driven enterprise sprang out of the individualized tenets of the protestant reformation” (Linklater 18). However, Linklater disagrees with Weber in that, “it would be more accurate to say that individual property owners were naturally drawn to a faith that gave priority to the individual conscience” (Linklater 18). Linklater’s critique based on Weber’s incorrect dating would support his later description of the “new American” inclination toward Reverend John Cotton’s sermon. Linklater describes Cotton’s sermon as giving private property a “biblical backing”, noting, “there was biblical evidence to reassure the new Americans that their right to individually owned, landed property depended on their own efforts in improving the ground, and not on English law” (Linklater 28). In the “new American” frame of reference, another ingredient is added to Linklater’s contagious recipe for disaster: democracy. He reminds us, “The first major democratic decision taken on American soil,” was, “in favor of individual ownership,” and, “carried a symbolism that echoes down the centuries,” referencing the Mayflower settlers’ decision to turn away from a more “communist”-like model of living toward conjoining allotments of private property to form a community (Linklater 25). However, this tripartite “monster”, Protestantism, private property, and democracy, formed during a time when private property was still widely regarded as validated by monarchies.

As such, lastly, I’d like to mention how the Divine Right of Kings plays a role according to Linklater. The author’s discussion on colonies highlighted the nature of the relationship between monarchy and property. As he outlines the legality of royal charters that granted territory to a company or powerful proprietor, Linklater claims, “The King’s royal power, backed by ‘divine grace’, as the charter also specified, was the ultimate authority that enabled colonists to claim that particular bit of the earth’s surface as their property… Real estate was literally and legally, royal estate” (Linklater 29). This unprovable notion chafes against the Judaic concept, stemming from Leviticus, that humans are “mortals”, “mere strangers and sojourners” by definition unable to own land (Linklater 26). Similarly, the Divine Right of Kings grates against the idea held dear to third century B.C. Chinese emperors that rulers are but, “intermediaries between the spiritual and material worlds” (Linklater 26). Both the Judaic and Chinese perceptions (and others that Linklater mentions) of a person’s orientation in the universe speak to the individual, but do not prioritize it making private property an unstable concept. I wonder how these rather humble and beautiful existential ideas could be incorporated or reimagined in a society indisputably defined by an “individualized ethos of the property-owner influenced government, the law, and everyday life” (Linklater 38). It very well may be impossible, as private property seems less an ethos, but more a religion; a religion with its own mystical all-powerful beings who really own the earth: corporations.

Each of this week’s readings addresses the validity of private property by presenting theological or spiritual approaches to the relationship between people and land. In the Hebrew Bible, man is characterized as a caretaker of the land. Adam is placed in the Garden of Eden to “dress it and keep it,” but is also sent forth from the Garden, “to till the ground from whence he was taken” (Genesis, 2). It is clear that the Hebrew Bible paints man as originating from the earth he is meant to take care of, which begs the legitimacy of privately owned property if all people, as descendants of Adam and Eve, were made from earth they may be barred from inhabiting. The underlying question here is, as St. Augustine asks, “By what right does every man possess what he possesses?” (Gibb 1). As Christians and Jews today certainly own private property, origin is by no means a right to possession. For St. Augustine, the Lockean alternative seems also ill-fitted. Nowhere does St. Augustine mention labor as a necessary component for man to possess what he possesses. And if we were to go down the Lockean route, since God created the heaven and the earth, and since that creation can be construed as labor, he technically owns everything. However, the Lockean interpretation is anachronistic, and therefore perhaps not applicable.

Chief Seattle’s discussion of land is similar to the Hebrew Bible’s in that there seems an obvious tether between the physical and spiritual. In the Hebrew Bible, “everything that creepeth upon the earth,” within exists, “a living soul” (Genesis, 1). Comparably, Chief Seattle claims, “the soil is rich with the life of our kindred,” when describing the deep sorrow his people felt as white settlers violently took over the natives’ land. However, Chief Seattle’s explanation of man’s connection to the earth seems deeper and more mystical because the connection does not stem from an all-powerful, central being but animates the inherent spirit inside the living and nonliving alike. And because of the spirits so deeply ingrained in the landscape, Chief Seattle describes why man can never truly be alone despite desires to privatize the uses of land. He says, “In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.” The values of community so crucial to Native American culture insisted that even without other people around, man was in the spirited company of the natural world around him. Whereas Native Americans saw the natural world as a force to cohabitate and act in symbiosis with, the white settlers saw it as something to tame and control. For the settlers, the earth was not a living thing, but something to subdue for the progress of civilization. As such, nature and civilization would never be able to exist at the same time; civilization depends on such a subduing. Even to be considered a “man” in the eyes of the settlers required a recognition of private property. “Rights” to such “property” were given to Native Americans often as code for the true intent to break up their communal ties to land, leaving the natives defenseless against this damning liberty.

Radically different from both conceptions of property and ownership in the Hebrew Bible and by Chief Seattle is Confucius’ offering of the Dao. Confucius proclaims that popular interest in government is a sign of political failure and moreover that, “when the Dao prevails in the world, governance does not lie in the hands of grandees. When the Dao prevails in the world, the common people do not discuss governance” (16.2). I cannot speak to the governing structure of Chief Seattle’s tribe, but white, and by 1854, “American”, settlers were bound by the principles of “democracy” which necessitating the allocation of private property. Suffrage was linked to property ownership and race. Civic participation was (and is) inextricably linked to private ownership and wealth. Yet Confucius insists the goal is for “common people” to be unconcerned with governance. Clearly we are straddling two very different conceptions of the best way to organize society, but what is intriguing is that the organization of society is primarily talked about in terms of property. The thread of all of these readings seems to be that in order to discuss how to live, we also must discuss our relationship as to where we do that. Whether it be a relationship of caretaking, symbiosis, or duty, it becomes clear that the basis of society rests upon our relationship with land– how we treat it, who it’s been stolen from, and what say we even have over it.